I know the barrier review is the current big project, but I wanted to drop this here for future consideration.

Spelling up is boring. Not saying I want to achieve khri level speed with respect to spelling up (insert check in reroll joke here), but there has to be some happy middle between seconds and 10++ minutes. It takes me longer to spell up than a battle spell lasts. I used to think about this as a paladin and ranger problem back in the day because I’d put money on those guys taking longest to spell up at spars. I also arranged my opponents based on that experience if I was hosting a sparring event. I now think it’s really just an MU issue that paladins and rangers just feel more because of skill set, and it can be tackled as such without budgeting huge amounts of time on only the small population of tert MUs.

A few things I think could make spelling up much less painful without talking spell batteries and other stuff in the domain of primary MUs or making any MUs significantly more powerful/overpowered:

1. Making the subject magic types more like debilitation with respect to mana cost. I feel like an intro spell shouldn't require as much mana as an advanced spell at cap.
2. Eliminating the battle spell distinction and just making all prep times shorter based on spell difficulty/skillset/skill. Same reasoning as 1.
3. Adding a mid-prep message denoting when not fully prepped but not likely to backfire. This is often guesswork and maybe there’s a PAFO or technical reason for this, but I don’t find having to figure this out very fun; I may be in the minority and care less about this than 1 and 2.

As far as benefits go, this doesn’t hurt dispel’s effectiveness too much because dispel would also benefit from cost reduction and the hardest (best?) spells will still take a lot of mana to recast; paladin, ranger and some other MU opponents will go afk less often while waiting for their partners to spell up at sparring events; the most QoL benefit goes to guilds that don’t see as much development time; and it helps 9 of 11 guilds.

As for cons, some sparring opponents will have less time to make a sandwich before they spar; attunement skill and room mana might be slightly less useful, I guess; dispelling cheaper spells may be slightly less useful (from what I’ve read in the discord, this might not be a con)… Honestly, I can’t think of too many, but I'm open to them if anyone else has more.

>That said, I don't know if spells should be easier_/_faster to throw up in general, because my understanding is that not being able to machine gun out capped spells is part of the general goal of having folks pick what they want to put up, vs everything under the sun. Folks aren't meant to have a dozen buffs up.

Yeah, this is my understanding as well. That's why I don't think it would be good to reduce all spells' time/cost. Plus, I feel like if it were that big a deal, we'd always expect NMUs to get rolled by any fully buffed MU. In my experience NMUs don't seem to be at quite that big a disadvantage over MUs despite being unable to throw up every buff in general. Further, it seems like any significant disadvantages are usually due to other game mechanics than time to spell up or number of buffs. Put another way, I never feel like my paladin is going to stomp an NMU because all his buffs are up; if anything, I feel like I need them all to keep up.

TBH, I would consider it a big, no, massive win if spelling up took 6 minutes instead of ~12 minutes.

>>Citation needed.

::looks up at thread where people are remarking how difficult it is to keep dozens of buffs up, as it has been for years upon years::

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

>Is that a problem since the maximum duration buffs way back? If so, how about another maximum duration buff?

I think it did predate the max duration buff. That said, there have also been GM comments concerning how magic tertiary MU guilds ideally should have a spell to ability balance that's weighted more heavily on abilities and secondary MUs should have a more even balance whereas primaries should be weighted towards spells. It didn't quite work out that way and I'm perfectly okay with that because I enjoy my paladin's spells, BUT it can be a real chore spending 11-15 minutes spelling up for a 5 minute fight.

If you're buffing for a sparring event, that means you have to start rebuffing as soon as you're done with the first fight so you're ready for your next fight and buffs don't fall off during intermediary fights. If you extrapolate to the whole sparring event, assuming you don't know or have control over when you fight you could be buffing for an hour for two 5 minute fights.

In simple training, this is barely an issue because you really only need a couple of key spells/abilities to be effective, but it can be felt in PvE as well. I spell up completely for the Duskruin arena for obvious reasons, during invasions and if I actually want to hunt/train at level or a bit above despite inefficiency. Managing your buffs is also tricky in this situation. With all the text scroll, you pretty much need triggers and scripts to spell up.

*Reposted this to edit for clarification.